


I'll Follow You Into The Dark

by bearism



Category: Lovestruck - Fandom, Starship Promise (Visual Novel)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, atlas likes to curse, but that doesnt mean antares is right, canon divergence - mc has a different family, corrupt union, lets save the galaxy!, mcs name is ophelia, the empire is not one cohesive government, there is a stabbing in the first chapter but its only a light stabbing dont worry, timed mission, wrong place wrong time
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-16
Updated: 2018-11-16
Packaged: 2019-08-24 10:20:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16638083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bearism/pseuds/bearism
Summary: When a bounty goes sideways for the promise crew, they team up with a genius engineer and mini disco machine to uncover a local crime lord's blackmail scheme.Little do they know, the device they're after could change the fate of the galaxy...AKA Atlas just wants to go home and Ophelia wants to find one(currently unbeta'd)





	I'll Follow You Into The Dark

**Author's Note:**

> here it is  
> see yall next friday

-

In short, and this is a common philosophical sucker punch, mortality is a curse. In all of milky way history, there is no record of an immortal sentient race, much less a singular person, and if there ever was, then she must be extremely private about her life. In every advanced civilization across all sectors and planets, communities have looked up and asked if there was a beyond. More than just a void! There were lights and color! So…. more? At that point, who knew.

No record of forever, but detailed accounts of how people have rebelled against it. Nihilistically, whole groups have dedicated themselves to themselves and told that empty universe to go fuck itself, that their lives will be filled with warmth and light and no higher or lower power can stop them from taking care of their own. Some appealed to that same universe for answers. Found meaning in the way the stars aligned and said ‘it's not just void, it never has been, even nothing will be something if we find it’.

Others found comfort in that void. If the stars were so unfeeling, then neither comfort nor judgement should befall an individual among them. Oh, but how to be with the stars? How to travel that weightless sky and feel every choice you made become miniscule in the face of infinity...that was the dream.

But Ophelia had always had trouble feeling too small. It was never a good feeling, being told she didn't matter. When she realized that beyond her colony there were no sympathizing suns, she felt abandoned. Only after Michael adopted her was she able to modge podge something of a shield against existential insecurity, and it was hardly a consistent one at that.

It went like this:

She used her hands; her hands were useful.

Her hands were useful because she liked to help.

She helped best when she was solving a problem because she liked solving problems.

But she also liked asking questions.

This back and forth engaged her, nurtured her, made her the prodigy her parents wanted so desperately. So along with her exceptional comprehension skills in maths and science...

Ophelia became an engineer.

In the face of losing two families and teetering on the edge of losing herself, after the hurricane of academia she navigated with discomforting grace, past all the clusters of stars and planets she could count from the balcony of the apartment she’s lived in since she was 12, Ophelia became someone that acted. If there was a question, she would pursue it. Never a problem she couldn't eventually solve. She had seen two whole colonies in the course of her entire life and could feel the void between them in such an acute way that for a while she was at a loss as how to address it.

Mortality taught her optimism. Aggressively. Kindness out of spite. Deadlines taught her how to forgive and how to grieve and how to make the best out of a day old pot of coffee. The caveat here though, the one thing trillions of mortal people before her felt just as strongly as gravity or speed.

Death teaches fear. How hard it is to live because of it.

-

It doesn't take a super genius to know that being stabbed hurt. Any collection of nerves, when impaled, light like Navi with some Really Important Advice, the “you’ve got mail” of pain.

_You’ve been stabbed_

What Ophelia didn't know was that people didn't always react to that pain in the way you would think.

For example, in the 7 seconds it took for her to realize that she’d gone from friendly encounter to fatally poked, she had time to think about how much she liked green eyes. She’d suddenly felt a stitch in her side, like she’d been running for too long, so she went to rub at the spot to get it to loosen up and surprise! Knife. Her reaction?

“I get to keep the knife right?” she’s only slightly shaking now, fear registering as something faint and peripheral like the muffled bass behind her. “I mean. Assuming you’re going to leave me here, this is the last thing you give me. Right?” 

The figure in front of her cuts a menacing shadow out of the neon lights over head. He stands in such a way that reveals his hesitation, his regret. And still, she looks past it.

“It’s a very nice knife,” she clarifies. She’s not lying either. She know exactly who it belonged to.

It catching up to her now, the adrenaline. She knows her hand is shaking and it not exactly helping her to hold on to the hilt of it, but she can't bring herself to stop. What she can do is slow her descent to the floor, because despite her heavy lean against the wall she finds herself falling...or maybe the floor is just reaching out to her because she swears the walls stretch with it…

Man she really likes green eyes. Michael had hazel eyes, she can't remember exactly what shade because they always turned out red in pictures but 

Oh jeez that's blood. That's a looooot of blood. Maybe she she should sit down? 

“It’s fine! It’s fine, I’m already sitting, I’m fine,”

“What?”

Oh.

This is the divorce of the only family she's ever loved. A separation of truth and trust. She thinks she hates him now, this man in front of her, and it startles her how suddenly she comes to this emotion.

If you had told her fifteen minutes ago that she would become a… a what? Stabee? Violence receiver?

Ah. Victim. 

If you told her she’d become a victim like this, she’d tell you, stubbornly, that she’s not a victim. That she can’t think of anyone who would play her like that. As Optimistic and Persevering as Ophelia Elizabeth Drowner is, she always considered her circumstances products of some discernible beginning. Cause; meet effect. Such is the way her life has gone, however unfair, even in her worst moments, and yet…

And yet…

Here her worst moment is unfolding. Scrap pile puppy clinging to her shoulder broadcasting every panicked thought in vibrant holovision. This is sadistic. All for a zoning bot. Hubble, why didn't she realize that he had–

FUCK, ow, okay, let go of the knife, Ophelia. The shudders are wracking her entire body now. She has to focus on uncurling each finger from the metal hilt and the moment she removes her hand she cant resist closing it back into a fist, like some kind of fatalistic rubber band.

She doesn't like being stabbed.

All thoughts turn to escape. The alley is narrow and she can’t run, but if she stays still long enough he might leave. 

Assuming she's still conscious by then. He didn't hit an artery and the knife is still there, obviously, but there's still so much blood…

He steps forward. From down here, the red neon lights a morbid halo crown. The hoodie only slightly obscures his face and stills sees… guilt. It's just him again. This disconnection between his face and his actions set the walls spinning again while she wracks her brain for the last time he looked this malicious.

He’d been so inviting when she ran into him, especially when she was trying to get away from the metallic thump of club heartbeat, so welcome. Just happy to see her. Not this. Not union nightmare in silver gilt. Not a handsome stranger either.

Just Tyrian.

She doesn't think he realizes how scared she is right now. He towers over her, expression flitting from fear to guilt to some icy mask she's never seen. She guesses that's appropriate. She hasn't seen a lot of him since he joined the union, and now his muscular physique only calls attention to his role. Not judge, just deliverer. Executioner.

This is cruel.

He steps forward again, this time slouching against the frame of a busted inka-cola machine. He's taken to stare at the knife instead of her. Anything but her. She guesses this is his way of making it easier; he knows that if he were to look at her now, he would see how much she hates this. How much she hates what made him this way.

Squeezing his eyes shut, he begins to reach for her left shoulder.

He stops. 

Tyrian Aquila is a coward. He's a hypocrite and a masochist and a horrible friend. Tonight, he will be an even worse soldier.

Gathering her jacket in one hand and holstering his gun with his other, Tyrian reaches to his own shoulder and clicks his radio off.

 _Look at me_ , she wants to yell, _Fucking look at me! Come back, please, dont go..._

This is bitter.

Lemons. Old milk. Bleach.

He casts one last long look from the mouth of the alley. The red bathes him now. He doesn’t help her up. He doesn't take pearl. He leaves. 

This is him saying he didn't _not_ choose her. 

This is her telling him to go fuck himself.

She screams.

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! A few notes on this fic:
> 
> \- I don't like the basic family stories lovestruck gives for mc backgrounds so I tend to make my own and stick it to canon :P  
> \- That being said, my family headcannon is that mc is adopted into a shitty foster family pretty young. her experience here sets her up for depression and social anxiety, gives her self confidence issues, all things we see in canon  
> \- She has an older brother in this family (she's adopted when she's 2, he's 20 yrs older with a job in the union army) and he's been thru the same shit his parents are going to try to put her through and says “fuck it I'm gonna go to court for this kid” because he loves his little sister  
> \- This is why she and tyrian are pro union (at first)  
> \- Speaking of union! Ive had to come up with my own lore and systems for them bcuz lovestruck is skin deep (for good reason, gotta keep timelines somewhat cohesive) so basically… net neutrality does not exist in union space unless you know ways around it, basic needs (clean air, clean water, gravity, access to education and food) is NOT freely provided on union colonies, especially if you're lower class, and the union likes to call them a democracy but its pretty much a democracy in the way the u.s.a. Is a democracy (ie only technically a democracy and not really run like one)  
> \- Tyrian is still a childhood friend but they grow up more like siblings than… potential love interests… what the fuck was lovestruck thinking when they did that :/  
> YOU WILL NOT SEE MICHAEL IN THIS FIC he might be mentioned or something but I’m not gonna bring a dead man back to life ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ its for the angst sry  
> \- Sp mc DOES have social anxiety in all the routes but because they have different writers in all the li routes she's slightly different ie jaxons mc is more patient, orion's is canonically autistic, atlas’ mc has a more ride or die (LITCHERALLY) vibe maybe that's just how i read it lmao
> 
> if u comment i will love you forever <333


End file.
